


Gold as It Should Always Be

by PasdeChameau



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Battlestar Galactica (2003) AU, But that's mostly because James is jealous and everyone is chronically stressed, Canon-Typical Violence, Deteriorating mental states, M/M, Most notably Harry Goodsir and Sophia Cracroft, Overuse of space metaphors, The latter doesn't come off great in this tbh, With cameos by many others
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 17:33:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20049877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PasdeChameau/pseuds/PasdeChameau
Summary: What happens after the world ends. Battlestar Galactica (2003) AU.





	Gold as It Should Always Be

**Author's Note:**

> Lately I’ve been rewatching _Battlestar Galactica_, which prompted me to do the absolute worst thing possible: write an AU. So, naturally, it turned into the longest fic I’ve written for this fandom.
> 
> Anyway, while I’ve borrowed several events and story arcs from _BSG_, I think the only real preexisting knowledge you need is as follows:
> 
> 1) _SG starts_ with almost the entire human population (spread across 12 planets) being wiped out in a surprise attack by robots they themselves initially created, called Cylons. Some of the Cylons look human; in fact, some of them are sleeper agents that don’t actually know they're Cylons.  
2) The ~ 50,000 surviving members of the human race are now on the run in space, under the protection of a battlestar, looking for a place they can resettle. Specifically, “Earth,” which is mentioned in their religious texts.  
3) I’ve stuck with _BSG_’s cringe-inducing substitute for “fuck” (“frak”), because I’m committed to this bad idea, damn it. Ditto for “gods” instead of “God” (the Colonies worship the Greek pantheon, but lbr, it doesn’t really roll off the tongue in the plural).

It begins like this, after the world has already ended: James’s hand slipping on the throttle, throwing his bird right instead of left, sending it hurtling into the path of Sophia’s Viper. He reacts before he’s fully realized his mistake, slamming to a stop that ricochets inside his chest. Too slow, even then: he’s clipped Sophia, and trails miserably behind her as she limps her way back to _Terror_.  
  
“What the _hell_ was that?” she demands as soon as she’s clear of her cockpit. The nose of her Viper, now that James can see it clearly, is crumpled inwards like a junkie’s. His own has fared better, although the crash has all but lifted the paint off one side, scratching away his callsign. The people James grew up amongst—poor, overworked, desperate people starved for meaning—would probably see that as an omen, but then, those people are all dead and James is, for the moment, still alive, so what does that prove really?  
  
James lets his helmet clatter to the floor, running a hand quickly through his hair, damp with sweat and flattened at the collar. “I’m sorry, I just—I’m sorry.” Away from Sophia’s line of sight, he fists his fingers, then spreads them wide, trying to recall the feel of the stick beneath them. Flying has long since lost its sheen, but today’s mistake was an entirely different order of unnerving. What, exactly, had happened?  
  
Sophia huffs, tugging on the zipper of her jumpsuit. In the brassy light of the hangar deck, the skin beneath her eyes is smudged purple and green. The attacks have hung at least a decade on her, and whole centuries’ worth of fear. Distracted as he is, James feels a moment’s pity. “Look, I apologized. It won’t happen again. I just need to hit my rack for a while.”  
  
“Yeah, right—like we’re not all tired,” Sophia snarls, and then her lips twist viciously. “Or have you been clocking extra hours fraking the commander, _sir_?”  
  
James hears her at a distance, still grasping for the memory, the throttle. His fingers gloved, but something more than that—remote. He thinks about banking left, but can’t sense the corresponding shift of bones and fibers. Something like dread opens wide in him, unaccountably— it’s gone in a moment, but leaves him longing to draw blood. “Jealous?” he asks.  
  
“Hey, hey,” Graham soothes from the cockpit of his Viper. Close by, perched atop John Irving’s Raptor, Silna has paused in her work, a wrench dangling between her fingers as she watches the argument curiously. Sophia, though, only rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Enjoy the hangovers and ED. Just try not to kill me the next time Francis keeps you up too late, kay?”   
  
She stalks away then, as James’s fingers clench and clench at the lip of recollection.  
  


  
As it happens, Francis has been keeping James up too late recently, though not for the reasons Sophia had in mind. James had been nothing short of stunned the first time McDonald passed word for him to come to the commander’s quarters, uncertain what, after all, was more improbable: that Francis would lay off the booze, even—especially—at the call of the apocalypse, or that he’d want James for company while doing so.  
  
(“Don’t let it go to your head,” he’d hacked from his bunk, the first time James reported to him. “I’m bound to end up hating anyone who’s here for this. Might as well get a head start.”   
  
Exasperated, James slouched backwards in his chair, only for Francis to call him to attention. “Anyway, you’re CAG, and I’m not exactly up to command meetings. Just go ahead and brief me now; I’ll stop you when I need to puke.”)  
  
Had that only been two weeks ago? The attack on the colonies has pried the strands of ordinary time apart: strange—impossible—to think that from one morning to the next, the human race had all but gone extinct.  
  
And then there is the change in Francis, which has hardly been less dramatic. James had loathed the man virtually from the moment of his posting, and for six months afterwards, he’d been sure the feeling was mutual. But so much of what James had found intolerable—the gloom, the apathy, the surliness—had seemed to slough away alongside the decades of drink. There are moments now when Francis is almost friendly, and James has never able to resist the pull of someone pulled towards him, however tenuously.  
  
And so, today, he risks ending his briefing on a light note. “Oh, I almost forgot—I tried to murder Sophia during a training run.”  
  
Francis snorts, and something warm seats itself, comfortable, in James’s chest. To say that Francis looked healthy would be a stretch, but he’s had no seizures in days and is sitting upright, the IV stand relegated to status as a coatrack in a corner. “Bet she didn’t like that.”  
  
“Not really,” James smiles. The silence that follows rings horribly strained in James’s ears. He swirls the contents of his glass—water, in deference to Francis—then blurts, “She thinks we’re frakking.”  
  
Sickness has thinned Francis’s already pale skin to near translucence; the flush that spreads across his cheeks now runs red and wild. “That’s insane.”  
  
James studies the glass he finds himself still holding. “Yes, well, I’m not sure I did much to disabuse her of the idea. We were arguing, and—I’m sorry. I know the last thing you need is people thinking their commanding officer is breaking the rules on fraternization—”  
  
With a groan, Francis leans backwards in his bunk. “To be honest, I stopped caring about enforcing those the moment the first bombs hit. Still—”  
  
“I _am_ sorry,” James tries again. There’s a note of pleading in his voice now; he hates himself for it but can’t control it, or bear to see this tentative friendship slip away.  
  
Francis’s frustration has already begun to dissipate, though. He laughs, then catches James’s eye. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not like anyone’s going to think I’ve compromised your virtue, after all. I’m sorry for your sake, though; I’m not much of a credit to your reputation, I imagine.”  
  
The return to joking steadies James. He winks. “Oh, you know about that, do you?”  
  
“Not the half of it, I’m sure.”  
  
“Then you’d better let me enlighten you. Let me think…”  
  
A quarter of an hour slips away, and James is arriving at the punchline. “So we’re lying in bed afterwards, chatting, and she mentions her ex, and how she’d dumped him for cheating on her. And I suddenly realize—”  
  
Francis stares at him. “No—”  
  
“No, it’s true—I swear! I was the other man.” Amusement and horror flicker on Francis’s face in quick succession, and James laughs, raising his hands in surrender. “Well, I didn’t know he had a girlfriend at the time, obviously. I do have _some_ standards. Still, I can’t say I went out of my way to see her again, after that.”  
  
Francis is laughing now as well, eyes crinkling with the force of it. When he at last regains his composure, his features all seem subtly altered, but somehow more his own than ever—lit up and rounded out with something new. Shy. “James Fitzjames,” he drawls, “I never thought I’d see the day when I actually enjoyed one of your stories. You almost make me believe in miracles.”  
  
  
  
It’s strange, but even after all that’s happened, there are still moments—days, in fact—that are utterly unremarkable. CAPs are launched, reports are written, repairs are ordered, and _Terror_ still bobs, untroubled and serene, in the endless night, the civilian ships hung like stars about her. As time goes by unbroken by the shrieking of alarms, the silence—the thick, thrumming silence of a ship, metal and engines and motion—takes on the quality of a lullaby. Better, an anesthetic.  
  
Some fears, however, run too deep for soothing. And so one morning James wakes up late and groggy, the aftertaste of uneasy dreams still dark in his throat. On days like this, getting dressed feels like binding a wound—the uniform all that’s holding him together—and the clamor of the ready room, when he steps inside, threatens to unravel him entirely.  
  
“Alright, alright,” he barks, as he takes his place behind the podium. “Settle down. Shotgun and Bubbles are flying first CAP, and—something on your mind, Lieutenant?”  
  
George Hodgson, who had been whispering excitedly in Sophia’s ear, starts, stammers, and falls silent. Sophia, though, has an almost feline imperviousness to shame, and a chip on her shoulder to boot. “Sorry, Major. We just assumed you’d have heard by now, sir; Franc—Commander Crozier stopped by the duty locker himself to tell us. Those stims we’ve been taking? Someone got into McDonald’s supplies and tampered with them.”  
  
“What?” James’s thoughts today feel like molasses, sticky and slow, and Sophia—with her ironic shows of respect, her willingness to flaunt her relationship with the commander—is irritating him beyond what’s reasonable. “Tampered with them how? Why would anyone do that?”  
  
“Swapped them out. Heart pills, but at the doses we’ve been taking those stims, they could do some damage,” Graham offers. “McDonald caught the change doing inventory. Good thing, too—it’s not like we double-check when we’re knocking them back.”  
  
“Goodsir could have done it. He’s in and out of sickbay, he’d probably know the effects of different meds—”  
  
George, again. “Don’t be absurd,” James snaps. “_Doctor_ Goodsir has a reputation in the scientific community. He’s well-known—respected. The idea that he’d try to hurt anyone on this ship—it’s insane.” And, of course, Goodsir has been tasked with uncovering a means of differentiating human cells from Cylon, though no one in the room but James is privy to that information. Never mind: there are possibilities too awful to contemplate, and this slim hope being lost to the Cylons is one of them.  
  
“But, sir,” Irving is pressing, “If he were a Cylon, he might not even know—”  
  
“Shut the frak up!” The loudness of his own voice startles James, glancing chidingly off the walls. He shifts uneasily from one foot to the other. “Let me be clear: I don’t want to hear any of you making those kinds of unfounded accusations again. Rumors are dangerous—we can’t afford a panic in the fleet. If you have legitimate concerns, take them to a superior. Otherwise, keep your mouths shut. Skids up in an hour.”  
  
  
  
Francis, fully recovered, is shouting a string of expletives down the phone line when James knocks on his door that evening.  
  
“Franklin,” he spits the moment he’s hung up. “Idiot thinks he can find Earth—that the gods are speaking through him or some crap. How that man got a cabinet position—”  
  
“The perks of being married to the president,” James says, commiserative. “Just be glad he’s not in charge himself.”  
  
Francis grunts, settling back into his chair. “Tell me about these stims.”  
  
Much as James has anticipated the question, the abrupt change of topic throws him off guard. He stands a little straighter, reflexively. “I’m…not sure what you want to know, sir.”  
  
Francis throws an impatient scowl at him. “Gods, I’m not interrogating you. Sit down. And don’t call me ‘sir’—humility isn’t a good look on you. So—the stims. McDonald says they were swapped out for heart medication.”  
  
“Digitalin. It’s toxic in high doses” James says, then adds, by way of explanation, “My father—well, grandfather—used to take it. Had to keep it locked up.”  
  
Francis’s look has turned appraising, but his response skips neatly over James’s reference to his childhood—a more guttingly personal revelation, somehow, than his stories of sexual exploits or skin-of-his-teeth aeronautics, and one he’d never have blurted out if he’d only been less exhausted. “Right, well—let’s hear your theory.”  
  
“My theory?” James echoes. “I thought—well, it must have been the Cylons, don’t you think?”  
  
Given Francis’s mood, James expects a cutting response to these careful, obvious words. Instead, a moment’s silence passes before Francis repeats, quiet, “It’s been a long few days. Weeks, actually. And I know you’ve had to work overtime while I’ve been….away. Take a seat.”  
  
James lets out a breath and does, sinking gratefully into a chair standing crosswise to Francis’s desk—a stiff-backed thing, but plush with leather. Wordlessly, Francis pours a cup of coffee from the carafe he insists on keeping at his elbow, only to swear himself hoarse each time he knocks the thing over. He nudges the drink towards James. “Blanky. McDonald. Myself. You. The pilots themselves, of course. Does anyone else know we’ve got them on stims?”  
  
James considers. “No one should. It’s possible one of them might have let something slip. I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but some of them have even bigger mouths than I do.”  
  
“Not so hard—I’ve known a couple of them for years,” There’s a tenderness to Francis’s smile, and James wonders, fleetingly, if he’s thinking about Sophia. “Alright, let’s assume no one else knows. That means someone in that group must have made the switch.”  
  
A cold, clear wash of fear, and all of James’s fledgling good humor vanishes on the spot. “You think one of my pilots is a Cylon?”  
  
“Or collaborating? I don’t _want_ to think it, but I’m running out of other options. Have you noticed anything? Any strange behavior?”  
  
The question tugs at something that’s both there and not there—the hole in which a memory should sit. An itch of unease, but what is there, really, to say about that? “I…don’t think so. Maybe I haven’t been as attentive as I should’ve been. I’ll tell you, of course, if I see anything going forward.”  
  
Francis nods, once, then clears his throat. “Thank you, James.”  
  
It’s a dismissal, James knows, but he can’t stop himself from asking. “Sir—Francis. I just—how do you know you can trust _me_?”  
  
For the first time that evening, Francis seems at a loss, glancing down at his hands and picking craters into his cuticles. “I don’t, I guess. But there aren’t many people who’ve seen me puking my guts up night after night—fewer who’d look me in the eye afterward. I have to think that means something.”

  
  
The dreams continue—webbed, sticky things that gum up his mind for hours after he wakes. The plot, if there is one, fades with reveille, but the final image lingers. A red darkness branching up around him, vaulted—a forest, or a temple, or a heart. And the dim outline of a figure who turns towards him, slowly, and reveals himself to be wearing James’s own face.  
  
The dreams continue, but then, it’s the end of the world: everyone has nightmares.  
  
  
  
“Are you alright?”   
  
“What?” James drags his eyes and thoughts from the map of the tylium refinery he’s been studying. One well-placed bomb, and the fleet would have fuel for two, three years—maybe more. “Oh. Yeah, yeah—fine.”  
  
“You look tired.”  
  
James cops a serious look. “You know how it is with the Cylons, sir—no respect for our beauty sleep.”  
  
Francis laughs—obligingly, maybe, but there’s something to be said, James knows, for a shared conspiracy of good humor; there are times when lying draws you closer to someone than the truth ever could.   
  
“Guess that explains the—well…”   
  
Francis gestures towards his face, explanatory, and James’s own skin prickles in response. He remembers a conversation with Goodsir, Harry going on about mirror neurons that fired in response to another person’s pain or pleasure, a code written in light and darkness wordlessly telegraphed from one mind to the next. The basis of empathy, he’d called it—or had it been humanity?  
  
Really, James thinks, he just needs to get laid, and not by Francis Crozier, of all people.   
  
“James?” Francis’s voice has gone suddenly hesitant, and James realizes, all in a flash, that years of dour drunkenness and the pressures of command have probably left him with few opportunities to speak to others as he and James have been speaking. Casually—playfully, even. The fling with Sophia had ended years ago, long before she was posted to _Terror_. Who has Francis had to talk to since then, other than Blanky?   
  
The thought tweaks something in James’s chest. “Now, now,” he says, waving a lazy arc down his body, legs stretched out long as he reclines back on Francis’s couch. “Not everyone can be such an Apollo. That’s no reason to disparage your own loo—”  
  
“Oh, frak you.” Francis chucks a pen at him, and turns away—too slowly, though, to hide his smile. He taps the map. “Shall we?”  
  
They work steadily through the next hour and a half. As James rises to leave, Francis catches him by the wrist. “James—I meant what I said. You’re not looking well, and Gore—he was out for a run a few mornings ago, and saw you outside sickbay. Just…try to get some rest.”  
  
James can still feel Francis’s hand, hot as an iron, holding him in place even after he’s stepped into the corridor outside. And perhaps that’s why it isn’t until the next morning that the real strangeness of what Francis had said occurs to him. Because the truth of it is, James can’t remember having visited sickbay in months.  
  
  
  
Days. Dreams. A curl of burned paper in an ash tray, riding atop a mound of soot like a frail, dismal flag. James reaches for it, and it floats apart at his touch, scattering its message to the air.  
  
  
  
Goodsir approaches him in the ready room late one night, as James wipes the day’s roster from the whiteboard. Wipes Ranger—Graham—off forever.  
  
“Can I speak to you, sir? Privately?”  
  
James cants his head towards the rows of empty chairs. “Room’s yours.” _Erase, rewrite, erase, rewrite_. The Cylons, they say, download and are reborn each time they’re killed. All part of the day’s agenda, death itself become monotonous. They’d managed to retrieve Graham’s Viper, at least, though there hadn’t been much of Graham inside it—a halo of blood where the shot punched through the windshield, chips of bone embedded in the pilot’s seat. James sees these things quite clearly as he writes tomorrow’s flight schedule, and feels very little beyond a distant wonder at how easy it is to damn people with the stroke of a pen, and how impossible it is to resurrect them with the same.   
  
Still, Silna thought the Viper would be usable again, once its windows were replaced and its insides washed out. That was something.  
  
“It’s about the test, sir. The one that Commander Crozier asked me to design.”  
  
The words pierce the haze that’s descended on him, though barely. “In that case, it’s Commander Crozier you should be talking to.”  
  
“I know, I know,” Harry stammers, “I’m just not sure—I may be worrying over nothing.”  
  
James sighs. “Well?”  
  
“It’s, ah—the calculations I’ve been doing. Some of my notes have gone missing.”  
  
“Missing.” The room is quiet—a drowsy watchfulness settled deep in James’s bones. “You think they’ve been stolen.”  
  
“It…seems possible, Major. I don’t think I misplaced them, although I—I might not have been as careful with them as I ought to have been. I left some papers in the lab overnight. They weren’t there in the morning.”  
  
Tired as he is, James feels a flicker of fury at this. It vanishes, though, as quickly as it came. The lab requires a passcode to enter; in a kinder world—in a world that hadn’t ended—Goodsir’s carelessness would be nothing worse than common trust. “Alright,” he says at last. “I’ll look into it. Discreetly. In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention your concerns to anyone else—except the Commander or XO, of course.”  
  
“No, no, of course not. Thank you, sir.” Harry executes an awkward kind of half salute and turns to go.  
  
“One moment. The missing papers—did you have backup copies? Computer files?”  
  
Harry nods. “Copies—yes. Not files, though. The possibility of hacking—we know so little about Cylon capabilities…”  
  
James scrubs a hand across his face. “Right, of course. Just—make sure to keep whatever you have under lock and key from now on. A second lock and key, I mean—one that no one but you has access to.”  
  
Later, alone in his quarters, James falls heavily into his bunk. Breathes in, and out. Tallies the people he knows have access to the lab’s passcode. Smells ash, dry and deathly, on every inhale.  
  
  
  
Another night—perhaps the next.  
  
James finds himself once more in Francis’s quarters. It’s become common lately—finding himself in this way, here and there, and never any clarity to show for it. At least tonight his waking dreams have led him here, to a chair in Francis’s sitting room and Francis himself seated across from him.  
  
“I spoke with President Franklin earlier,” Francis is saying. “She’s planning to reconvene the Quorum later this month—wants additional security. I’m putting you in charge. I’m sorry, I know you’re overworked as things stand, but—”  
  
The apology grates. They both know well enough how thinly spread personnel is, they both know it can’t be helped: why this ritual show of remorse, and from someone as blunt, as honest as Francis, no less? “_Colonial One_?” James manages to ask.

Francis shakes his head. “Not enough space. It’ll be a whole media blitz. _Cloud 9_.”  
  
“Shit.” James leans back, closing his eyes on the headache he feels approaching. “In the dome, I bet. All those trees, fountains—it’ll be a nightmare to lock down.”  
  
“That’s what I told her.”  
  
James looks towards Francis, squinting against the glare; a floor lamp stands just behind Francis’s seat, and though the presence of the man blocks the lamp itself from James’s view, that same presence bends the light that passes by it strangely, polishing and focusing it to a white-hot glow. It’s like staring into an eclipse. “You disapprove?”  
  
“Of democracy? Not at all. Of politicians? Almost always.”  
  
The smile James forces feels brittle even to himself. Across the way, Francis leans a little closer, a silhouette resolving into form and color. “James,” he says, so, so gently. “What’s wrong?”  
  
Foolishly, James wants to cry. But when he opens his mouth, it’s only lies (_of course_) that come out, skirting around the edges of the black thing scrabbling inside him—all to buy a little more of Francis’s respect. “It’s…have you ever, I don’t know, felt…anxious about yourself? About who you are, I mean?”  
  
Francis cocks an eyebrow. “No one drinks whiskey for the taste. Or didn’t your mother ever tell you that?”  
  
“Stupid of me to forget,” James says, voice thick. It’s kind of Francis to offer him this out, even though he can’t accept it: how was it that James never recognized that kindness before? His fingers play along the armrest of his chair, tracing the whorls of an imperfection in the grain, darker than the wood that surrounds it—a burned, lashless eye staring up at him. “Actually, I, ah…never really knew my mother.”  
  
James glances up and sees Francis’s brow go creased with concern. It’s only then, in the off-kilter mirror of Francis’s expression, that he realizes he’s crying. Mortified, he shakes his head. “No, it’s not—like I said, I was too young to remember much about her.”  
  
“Alright,” Francis soothes. “Alright, James.”  
  
But James can only continue now. “She was a farmhand on Aerilon. One of those massive industrial operations, you know?” _Combines and rollovers. Pesticides spraying from the shower heads and faucets, blossoming up cancerous_. “There was an accident when I was three. She—my father left before I was born, so her parents raised me. After.”  
  
James pauses, wrung-out, though none of this is exactly what he meant to—needs to—say. It’s Francis who finally breaks the silence, and not in any way James expects. “Aerilon, huh? You don’t sound like it.”  
  
James’s lips twitch joylessly. “I had an ear. And a desire to get out.”  
  
“You’ve done well for yourself,” Francis says, staunch and tender all at once.  
  
And just like that, the chokehold of tears is back. “I…oh, gods, have I?” He is unraveling, flying apart, the strings of gravity cut, and he isn’t sure that it’s a mercy, all told, what happens next, but he’s certain that it’s necessary: Francis stands, then gathers James to himself in a rough embrace.  
  
James startles. _Have they even shaken hands before_? He can’t remember. It doesn’t matter: he feels himself go pliant against Francis’s body, like sinking into a warm bath. The wool of Francis’s collar smells just like James’s own, dulled and mildewed—water rationing, of course—but his hair, where it brushes James’s cheek, is almost shockingly soft.  
  
Drawing away from the man comes less naturally. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” James mutters, palming the lingering wetness from his face. “It’s just—I spent so long trying to forget all that—to pretend I was someone, anyone else. I never thought what it would mean to just…lose it.”  
  
Francis watches, patient as a star. “In the attacks, you mean?”  
  
James nods. Maybe it isn’t a lie. “It’s stupid, but I keep thinking, without that—without Aerilon, even without that frakking awful, grating accent—what am I?”  
  
He glances up, and Francis’s face swims before him, ragged in the closer light but shining golden. “Yourself, of course. Who you’ve always been.”  
  
“You believe that?”  
  
Weak, clinging words, and Francis looks away, embarrassed. _Embarrassed for me_, James thinks, and wants to leave, wants to tuck himself away somewhere dark where Francis—this man who only rises higher with every new crisis—won’t have to look at James, shivering and in pieces. Moving, though, is unthinkable, and so he stands still and listens as Francis speaks.  
  
“I—gods, James, you know I don’t believe in much, but…the day of the attacks, when we were holding off that baseship while the civvies jumped, and the _Carina_ couldn’t get her FTL spooled up. You brought back every single pilot safely, then went _back out there_ and ran interference for the _Carina_ while the rest of us jumped away. I don’t need to _believe_ that—I saw it. Saw you.”  
  
And then it wells up, everything so soft and fierce James has only been half-aware of until this moment, and his lips are on Francis’s, grasping and searching, and his hands grasping too, and Francis is still for a heartbeat and then—_then_—is grasping him back.  
  
“You didn’t, you know—see me I mean,” James says when they pull apart, the teasing just this side of hysterical. “You know—because you’d _jumped away_—”   
  
“I could still write you up for disobeying orders,” Francis says, “so why don’t you just shut up?”   
  
  
  
Even in the cramped confines of Francis’s bunk, they find ways to fall into one another, and keep falling, James’s thigh between Francis’s legs and Francis’s words in James’s ear. At last, Francis takes them both in hand, and when James comes, it’s with Francis’s hair, impossibly fine, twisted between his fingers. _Like corn silk_, James thinks later, resting against Francis’s shoulder, and reveres the man again for spinning those bitter infant memories into gold.   
  
This is the end, the world shriveling and flickering out in the blackness of space, but there are moments, still, when everything is right.  
  
  
  
Then, just six days after James wakes up in Francis’s bunk, he puts a bullet in Lieutenant Irving’s stomach.  
  
He doesn’t remember doing it—breaks the surface of consciousness seconds after the clap of the gun to find his finger on the trigger, and hands wrenching him around and down, down to the floor where John is also lying, bloodstains springing up in fireworks across his chest. Certainly, he doesn’t know why he did it.  
  
With the cold of the deck against his cheek and a knee digging into his back, though, he knows two things with horrible certainty.   
  
First, that he is a Cylon, and a murderer.  
  
Second, that he loves Francis, and has just lost him forever.  
  
  
  
This, then, is how it truly ends: _Terror_’s brig, and James in handcuffs, and the hatch sliding open to reveal Francis’s pinched and pale face.  
  
“Out,” he says. The marine’s eyes flit to James, and Francis snaps. “For frak’s sake, he’s handcuffed. Unlock his cell and then get the frak out.”  
  
Heather leaves. James wants to beg him to stay, and might if he were only afraid of himself. But the fear of what Francis will say is stronger, and all too earned, and so James forces himself to break the silence.  
  
“Is John—did I kill him?”  
  
“It’s too soon to say.” Francis won’t meet his eyes, and James’s stomach turns. Perhaps killing Gore was never the point. Perhaps the point was this—to twist and cajole and mould Francis into a shape where he could be broken. The thin taste of saliva stops James’s mouth: he thinks he’s going to be sick. He’d never known it was possible to be so tired. To have to will each heartbeat to its close. A hopeful man might take it for a feat of engineering—a computer tasked to self-destruct once its purpose has been served. But James isn’t hopeful, or a man, any longer.  
  
“You didn’t know, did you?”   
  
Another beat forced. “I think maybe I was programmed to—to make you…”_ To fall in love with you_. But he can’t say it. Because if this, now, admitting how deeply he has deceived Francis, feels like the quiet heat death of every cell in his body, how much harder to admit how deeply he has deceived himself? _Not real_, he thinks. _None of it was real. I was always a liar, I just never knew what I was lying about_.  
  
“No,” Francis is shaking his head, dogged and more lovable than ever. “No, I—I don’t believe that.”  
  
James laughs wetly. “You don’t believe in anything.” Beat.  
  
“Not much,” Francis agrees, and this time holds his eyes. James huffs another laugh, shrugging helplessly. In the twilight he’ll take Francis’s declaration—true or not—for the kindness that it is. His gaze slides to Francis’s sidearm.   
  
“You should—you should use that. To do it, I mean.”  
  
Francis stares. “What?” But James can see he knows.  
  
Carefully, James rises to stand before Francis; carefully, reaches his bound hands towards the gun. Even then, Francis flies two steps backwards, wide-eyed and automatic. James smiles faintly. “You see? I—I’m not _safe_. You know it, even if you won’t admit it. So, please, just…end this.” Though it won’t end for him, James thinks, if what he’s heard about the Cylons is true. For Francis, though, closure no matter which way his thoughts finally fall out: the gift of mercy for a lover, or the satisfaction of revenge on an enemy. Either way, release. _Enough. End this, now._  
  
“You’re insane.”   
  
Francis’s voice has broken. _Bullets and bombs, words cracking apart like shells_. James thinks of his mother—not his mother—gutted on the claws of a combine. Francis, splitting open on the pain James has caused him. “I’m a machine.”  
  
“No…James, no. I can’t.” Francis’s hand, though, has slipped downwards, lingering on the grip of his gun. Contemplative—not protective—and there’s a melancholy comfort in sharing this, at least, with Francis. In knowing that Francis’s actions, like his own, can’t help but undo his most cherished lies.  
  
“Then who? How? Francis—please. ”  
  
Francis says nothing for a moment—turns away, in fact, and draws in several ragged breaths, head low and shoulders quaking. He doesn’t bother to wipe the tears from his face as he turns back, and James is touched, somehow, by that.  
  
“Alright.”  
  
The word is scraped up by sheer force of will; James extends his hands, grateful and too aware of what the day has cost Francis already. Francis’s fingers close briefly around his own, and James thinks, once more, about how they hadn’t shaken hands, the first time they met.   
  
Then Francis grasps his gun, raises it to James’s brow, and fires.  
  
The world shatters but doesn’t end, and that, James will think later, is the cruelest thing of all.

**Author's Note:**

> A few other notes, for anyone interested:
> 
> This isn’t a one-to-one AU at all. I’ve mixed and matched a lot of plot points and character roles from _BSG_, and also made some up. So, for instance while there is a character in _BSG_ who essentially shares Fitzjames’s entire character arc (spoilers: Kat, who fakes her way into the military, sports an incredibly obnoxious persona to hide deep-seated shame, and then commits assisted suicide to avoid a painful and prolonged death after finally proving herself), I was drawing mostly on Sharon Valerii’s storyline. I also made him a flashy, Starbuck-style fighter pilot rather than XO (which would be more analogous to his real-life rank), and gave him some elements of Baltar’s backstory.
> 
> I rely pretty much exclusively on BBC murder mysteries for my knowledge of toxic substances, so I don’t recommend trying digitalin poisoning at home, both for reasons of efficacy and because, you know, that’s murder.
> 
> The title is adapted from Czeslaw Milosz’s “A Song on the End of the World.” Specifically, this translation: https://poets.org/poem/song-end-world


End file.
